Late Night Alumni, Live from the Great Hall

Finally, here it is. After more than a year since production, all 6 parts of Late Night Alumni: Live from the Great Hall have been released!

This marks Ex Machina Films' first professional credit and we hope it'll be the first of many.

Watch all 6 parts below. Also stay tuned for a big announcement from Ex Machina in the coming weeks.

Late Night Alumni - Shine (official video) Released!

The first of the Late Night Alumni live concert videos has been released through the official LNA website. Take a look below to see some great camera work from my team at Ex Machina Films: Nick Dunn, Matt Whittaker and Chris Bradshaw.

Keep an eye out for light streaks as those were all shot with my camera. Also, check out the focus pull at 3:48. I love that!

Return to Encore

You may remember my first timelapse from about two years ago entitled "Encore." Well, just recently on my way to Los Angeles I stopped in Vegas and shot this little piece.

Return to Encore from Connor Rickman on Vimeo.

Every shot is from the Panasonic GH2 with the Minolta 50mm Rokkor-PG lens. There is however, one exception. Can you find it?

Right before shooting I enabled the 44mbps hack to clean up the noise that would inevitably come with the black sky. I must say, I'm particularly pleased with the results. The Vimeo compression just doesn't do it justice, the image is clean and nearly artifact free! The GH2 is really in its element in a neon environment.

I'm not quite sure what the video "means" but it sure is pretty. Enjoy.

Outprocessing

This film had a bit of an interesting start. Dustin Schwindt, former US Army tank driver and current University of Utah MFA Film Student was pre-producing his thesis film when he asked me to get on board as 1st AC. He was nervous about shooting with the RED due to the fact that he had never used it before and figured my past experience would be useful. I think it's important to note right now that I have very limited experience operating a RED, my experience is mostly pulling focus.

Although I'm no expert, Dustin still figured I'd be useful so I started working with Cinematographer John Rogers to get this thing going as smooth as possible.

Curveball #1: The University of Utah decided that, because they hadn't yet taken their new RED out of the box yet, that it was not available to be used by students. Therefore we had to shoot on something else. Luckily John had just discovered the Technicolor CineStyle picture profile for Canon SLR's and after a few test shoots we decided it would be a good alternative.

"Whaddaya mean no RED?"

 Curveball #2: The talented Mark Macey, a close friend and collaborator of mine, was told by his professors that he needed to be focused on acting in the Theatre Dept. shows this semester and not student films. Therefore we needed to fill his role quickly before shooting started.

I'm sure you can see where this is going. I filled in for Mark at the reading and Dustin (most likely out of desperation, although he told me it was my performance) chose me for the role of PV2 Adamzig. See the picture below with the whole cast.

From back left to front right: Aaron Bruderer as Pvt. Harvell, Tony Gallegos as Pvt. Flores, me in the middle, John Rowland as Cpl. Young, Carter Wayne Blanc as Pvt. Callow and Colin McDermott as Spc. Pope.

Cal Ngyuen as Sgt. Streich.

What a group of guys. The film follows a group of soldiers on "Funeral Detail" and shows the contrast between their on-duty and off-duty interactions. Dustin actually served on the funeral detail while in the Army and had a lot of stories to tell through this script. A lot of what is shown may seem rude and crass but deep down it's really about these soldier's coping mechanisms being surrounded by death all day. Despite this, the story has a lot of heart and humor as well. Definitely not for young audiences but anyone with family who has served will understand.

Despite the aforementioned curveballs, the production moved quite well once we got going. Shooting was over the course of two weekends and rarely did we ever put in a full 12 hours. Dustin, John, Assistant Director Jim Heiner, Sound Wizard Jill Pecchia-Bekkum and Juliah our yoga instructor were really a get-it-done type crew. 

On-set yoga.

"Outprocessing" can be seen in the MFA film showcase at the end of the year. No official details have been released about the showcase but I imagine it'll be in late April at the Post Theater on the U of U campus.

I've worked on a few projects this year but this one was one of my favorites. Not sure if it was the great group of people or just the fact that I got to wear a stunning looking uniform but whatever it was, I'm sad it's over. That being said, I've very excited to see it!

Amazing what a polarizer and a grad-ND can do!

The obligatory "Album Cover" shot.

This shot could go in a gallery in my opinion.

Just a dead guy eating a bagel, NBD.

#larpiscoming

Education

You may have heard me talk about the possibility of founding a production company with long-time collaborators Nick Dunn and Michael Burnet. The cogs are turning to make this a reality which is very exciting but we're working on finding ways to set us apart from every other production company out there.

After talking about how to structure the business, Michael, Nick and I believe that in addition to creating media we also need to find ways to give back to the community. Media creation for non-profits and charities is one way we could donate our services but another idea was to offer our knowledge to young people in order to foster the next generation of creators.

Luckily, Nick and I have a connection at a local high school that wanted us to do exactly that. A grant was written for Nick, the director James, and myself to mentor students in creating a music video for a student artist. 

We shot for two days and tried to give the kids some idea of what it takes to create something of this scale. Then we handed our footage over to the students to edit. It's not finished yet but here's a promo and sort of a follow-up to the grant produced by the kids. I have to hand it to them, they make me sound like a real professional. The power of editing...

Gnashing

A few friends of mine are making a scary/funny movie just in time for the Halloween season. Remember Point B? Well almost everyone who worked on that worked on this as well. The only difference is that we added even more of my friends to the crew! Good to see you Jim Heiner and John Rogers!

The film is currently in post production but you can whet your appetite for the humor by watching the promo videos below. I was on the crew for one of those as well.

Point B

An enterprising friend of mine named Conor Long has created a masterpiece feature called "Point B." I could explain the premise in so many words but the brief description on the IMDB page does it the best.

"Four friends and Graduate students in the physics department of their University discover their clean energy machine actually works as a crude, rudimentary teleportation device. Through experimentation, adjustments and some misuse-use of the device, it is quickly discovered that the machine holds many consequences."

This film was an absolute blast to work on! Nobody got paid, nobody could be there 100% of the time and for the most part the food wasn't great, but for some reason it was the single most collaborative effort I've ever seen go into a film. 

I believe this is due in no small part to the amazing commitment of the writer David Gitlin and actors. David wrote this screenplay in an incredibly short amount of time, (the legend states he did it in one night). However long it took him, he created a great story with tons of wit and humor and made it easy for all the actors to fall in love with their roles. In doing so, every actor was so enthusiastic about their job it was infectious.

I'm not even going to talk about my job on this film because there are so many people above me that deserve more credit. I will say, however, that when this film comes out, look for who may be dancing his ass off in the club scene!

Late Night Alumni Preview Released

Well, it's been 9 months but it looks like the editors finally got around to cutting something together. If you don't remember my post about working with Kaskade and Late Night Alumni, you can read about it here.

Although I wasn't responsible for shooting the interviews, most of them were made possible though my sound equipment which I just happened to have on site with me. Being a small contributor to something as big as this is a really great experience because each moment you can identify as "yours" really makes you feel good once you watch it. I can't wait to see the finished product!

It's fun to see what other people do with your images and although the first 2/3 of the video doesn't seem to have anything that I shot in it you can see a few of my creations as soon as the beat drops. A good way to tell which images are mine is to look for the light streaks. I was the only operator with a streak filter! My favorite image is of Kaskade and Haley the backup vocalist at 2:15. Check it out below.

It's Coming

I know I've been absent for a while but I promise it's because I'm working on something big. I can't give away too many details but I can show you...this!